


A Brave Man

by infamouslastwords



Category: Giri/Haji (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gangsters, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Oneshot, Smoking, Yakuza, Yuto-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:40:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29490699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infamouslastwords/pseuds/infamouslastwords
Summary: In which Yuto is caught between Jiro, Fukuhara, and Eiko—between brotherhood, bravery, and love.Based on the short flashbacks during S01E04.
Relationships: Mentioned Yuto Mori/Eiko Fukuhara, Yuto Mori/Fukuhara, Yuto Mori/Jiro Yamamoto
Kudos: 1





	A Brave Man

_Sometimes I have a dream that I am running underneath a clear night sky.  
_ _There is fire all around me—and a great roar of noise.  
_ _It’s chaos.  
_ _I know I’m going to die.  
_ _And then, my eyes open._

Lunch break, end of spring—late May. The cherry blossoms just shed, and nothing as beautiful to look forward to until the autumn brings it gold and red into the leaves. Nothing but his bike and an encroaching heat sweeping the city.

As Yuto rounds the corner of the café to his bike, there is someone standing near it with an expensive yet slick suit, a clean face, and oily hair. Everything about the man immediately opposing, contradictory. Yuto sees this even though he must squint his eyes against the sun to truly take him in.

“Cute outfit.”

“Thanks,” Yuto replies, voice light and threatening, with a slight upward tilt of his chin. “It came with the bike.”

“Fucking adorable.” The man reaches forward, rings the bell perched on his handlebar all too familiarly. “Do you know who I am?”

Yuto cannot take his gaze away from the man’s eyes. He feels the corner of his mouth twitch in annoyance. “Some asshole?”

There is a tense moment between them before Yuto is throwing an easily predicted, easily ducked strike, and for this insouciance gets gut punched, nose hitting the man’s shoulder painfully as he involuntarily buckles over. His letter bag is emptied on the street. He is backed onto a tiled wall, spine scraping against the grout when the man proffers a business card with only one hand, the disrespect palpable. Still, Yuto takes it. What else can he do?

“This is who I work for. The boss wants to speak to you.”

The blood starts to pool into the back of Yuto’s nostril, only a matter of minutes before it leaks out onto his upper lip. “What about?”

The man turns to leave with little else but a smirk. Yuto looks down to the card, nursing his sore stomach and trying to even his breath. Then he sees the man waiting for him by a sleek black sedan, parked illegally against the curb of the busy street without so much as its hazards flashing. He is waiting for him, watching.

Hesitantly, Yuto lifts himself from the tiled wall. He begins to circle around to the passenger’s side when the man whistles to get his attention. It works.

“In the back. My side.”

Yuto watches as the wind takes some of the scattered letters into the gutter, flapping them uselessly, spreading. There is only a dull urge in him to collect them, quickly shoved down.

When he reaches the other side of the car, the man is pulling him roughly to him, patting the outline of his body, searching for weapons.

“You know what happens to you if you try anything?”

Yuto nods. The business card is still between his fingers, the blood making a steady descent to the end of his nose. The man nods curtly, a signal that allows Yuto to open the car door and slide in.

As the car is taken from park and put into drive, all Yuto can do is watch the nape of the man’s neck, where the dark blue suit jacket meets a crisp, stunningly white collar, meets the short ink black ends of his hair.

“You got a tissue?”

The man is navigating the car into traffic, his handling of the vehicle expert, sleek. Those magnetic eyes flick to the rearview, regarding him.

“Or, I could bleed all over the seat.”

The man scoffs. “Use your sleeve.” Then, muttering, “Didn’t even hit you that hard.”

Yuto slides his eyes to the side as he tilts his head back, sniffling. “What’s your name, anyway?”

They merge into traffic, taking an exit for Tokyo east.

“Yamamoto,” the man replies. “Jiro.”

…

By the time they reach the Ikebukuro estate, Yuto’s nosebleed has dried, leaving behind only a slight twinge of pain. He has not seen rooms like this outside of the 80s movies about yakuza from his childhood. Despite all his closeness to petty crime, he has never seen this kind of thing in person—but knows, knows in his bones, what it is.

As he enters under the tall lintel of the board room, taking his company-logo snapback off in respect and seeing the slim man behind the large desk in the far end of the room, he is no longer sure if he will leave here with his life. He thinks briefly that Taki’s smile while she repeated the steps on her arcade game the night previous may be the last time he sees such a thing.

Jiro sits to his left, and he dares a quick glance at the man’s face in its entirety, not just those sharp eyes staring at him from the rearview. He looks like he is waiting, mouth set in a line and brows knit in attempted understanding. Only, what is he trying to understand?

The person who Yuto assumes to be the boss, this Fukuhara, sits at his long desk and regards him with a cool, even gaze. His face is intelligent and hale, suggesting more than one life lived.

“What made you hit the bookmakers’ that day?”

Yuto likes the sound of his voice. He speaks nobly, fit for someone of his title. He is not the sleazy, R-rolling dirtbag of media gangster portrayals, no. His features are fine, and he is tenured and elegant for a man.

“There was a race that weekend,” Yuto begins lowly, meeting Fukuhara’s dark eyes. “Realized the horse was doped because every criminal I knew was betting on it. But it fell, and the horse the bookies backed won. Small odds,” he says, flitting his eyes to Fukuhara’s mouth as the man raises a porcelain teacup to his lips, “meant a big payout.”

“That’s smart,” Fukuhara smiles. Yuto laughs, genuine, a nervous reflex of his caused by high stress situations. It is childish, and he hates that he does this thing he cannot control. He tries to cover by continuing his explanation.

“After that, it was just about choosing the right place to rob.”

“But you chose wrong.” Fukuhara leans forward in his leather chair, the tufts bereft of what Yuto thinks is most likely a lean, long, strong spine. He places his tea into its saucer with a tiny chiming note, weaves his fingers between one another on top of the desk’s surface. A long moment passes in which he regards Yuto, running his eyes over every part of him, measuring.

“Well,” Fukuhara finally intones, getting up to partake in the greenery just outside the window. “You’ll have to atone to Shin Endo if you plan on working for me. Just to let him know that there is nothing amiss going on.”

“You want me to join your family?”

Fukuhara shrugs, asking honestly, “Why not?”

Yuto cannot help his mouth from opening, from questioning this, no matter the possible disrespect that comes from these inquiries.

“But, sir—why?”

Fukuhara is back at his desk, leaning forward over its surface with both palms placed flat as can be against its surface. His dark eyes bore into Yuto’s, placid and shrewd.

“Because I like winners.”

Papers are signed, red ink stamps affixed to documents and items set in order. Fukuhara has his underlings hand page after page to Yuto as he stands by the window, looks outside at the trees’ viridescent leaves glowing in the sun. Then, Fukuhara is no more as the sun is no more—slipped beyond the horizon.

Jiro sits next to him the whole time, watching, ensuring that each thing is filled in correctly. Yuto’s license information, application for the driver’s insurance, among a litany of others. It seems he is a pro, practiced at this part of the process.

Eventually he is once more in Jiro’s backseat as the city’s night lights slip over each of their faces, swimming in and out of the darkness.

“I saw the way you signed your name. You use the kanji for _brave_ and _man_.”

Yuto looks to the rearview, matching the man’s gaze as it appears in a flash of light, disappears in the sweep of black night. He cannot help but feel fascinated, feel something stir within him as a _furin_ ’s slip of paper would twist in a hot summer wind.

“Is that what you are?” Jiro asks. The edge of his _irezumi_ is visible just above his sleeve’s cuff, as his hand perches on top the black steering wheel at a red light. “A brave man?”

Yuto does not answer. Eventually he takes his eyes from the mirror, watches as the bustling nighttime Tokyo scenery becomes more and more familiar—closer and closer to home.

…

The nights get easier, not altogether peaceful, but—things do not haunt him so much. It is amazing what one gets used to, staring up at the shadows of tree branches on the ceiling of his miniscule flat in Ogikubo: Lying every few days to Kenzo and his parents about the job with the postal service, and letting a lifelong friend’s death sink into the dark waters of his soul.

The person who tripped through the terminal at Shinjuku station, wet despite Kenzo’s umbrella and fruitlessly attempting to light a cigarette as he cried—that person is as foreign to him now as a limb that has had its circulation cut off, numb, lifeless.

…

When his papers have been approved, fast-tracked by whomever within the government pipeline, Fukuhara asks him to his home to be fitted for a suit by his personal tailor. The man they send must not be the usual one, for he is youngish and nervous as his hands move the cloth measure around Yuto’s limbs.

Fukuhara watches from a corner of the ornate room, fingertips thoughtful against his chin, before striding over to snake the measuring length from the young man’s hands.

“Born in Tokyo?”

Fukuhara’s voice floats over Yuto’s shoulder, the man bending close to him as he slips the tape through his fingers, holding it a hair’s breadth away from Yuto’s outline.

Yuto inclines his face toward the source of the voice, answering in the affirmative. He can see from his peripherals as Fukuhara plucks a pin from the fabric of the suit, placing it between his lips. Then the man disappears behind him, breath stirring his long hair.

“And your education?”

Yuto wonders why the man is asking him these things—it must already be known. It has to be, just like everything else about him.

“I took night class for a while, in business management. My brother wouldn’t talk to me for weeks when I dropped out.”

Fukuhara is at his left side now, measuring from shoulder to hem of the suit jacket. He chuckles appreciatively, and Yuto feels relief as he is able to share this laugh with the man.

This relief is replaced quickly by a trill of panicked surprise when Fukuhara’s hands clap both of his shoulders simultaneously. The man leans further into his body, almost pressing his chest against his shoulder blades.

“But, you wanted to better yourself.”

The voice filters directly into his ear, and Yuto blinks past a shiver.

…

Jiro is there the next day when the suit is delivered. Yuto picks up the hanger by its hook, drapes the plastic dry-cleaning bag against his arm as he admires the craftsmanship, the stitches so even. He thinks this may be the nicest thing he has ever owned.

Behind him, Jiro clears his throat. His brow is raised skeptically, watching Yuto this whole time.

“It’s just a suit, man. Put it on already.”

Yuto falters, letting the plastic bag slip from his arms as he lowers them. Jiro is sighing in exasperation, striding over to him and taking the hanger from his grasp.

“Come on. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

Yuto shrugs his shirt from his shoulders, almost alarmed at how easy it is to defer to Jiro’s self-possessed know how. Maybe it is because he is the younger child, but Jiro’s dominance reminds him in a way of Kenzo’s. He knows new men sometimes refer to their colleagues as _aniki_ —older brother, just as it is in a real family. He wonders if he should call Jiro this, briefly, as the man hands him the crisp white button-up.

Jiro sees something working behind his eyes and a smirk passes his lips. He laughs, not unkindly.

“You look like a little kid right now.”

Yuto laughs smally in his throat, another nervous tick. When Jiro hands him the tie, he takes it hesitantly.

“I forget how to do this.”

Jiro rolls his eyes. “You really are just a brat, aren’t you?”

Yuto just holds his hand out until Jiro slips the tie from his palm, motioning for him to spin around. Jiro’s arms encircle his head, his smooth cheek hovering close to his own as he leans forward to see what his hands are doing to the knot.

“You ever think about cutting your fucking hair?”

Yuto brings his fingertips up on the right side, reaching past Jiro’s forearm to tuck some strands behind his ear. “Not really.”

“Stand still,” Jiro mutters, slapping his hand down. “You’re gonna make me mess it up.”

…

Three months later he is in a small _izakaya_ , sitting at the bar with a cigarette as a live band plays and Eiko twirls, shining, shimmering. It may be the alcohol, or it may be the realization, sinking like a stone in him, pushing his heart up to become an effervescent thing in the back of his throat—he is in love with this woman. The newness of her sparkles like the full pink lips that pull back over her white, white teeth, and no matter how many times he buries his face in the stolen scent of her, he never tires of it. He never fails to get high off of it.

Three months of driving, of reporting to Fukuhara’s headquarters, and all he has done truly is be an errand boy—if one could consider the boss’ daughter an errand. It isn’t until mid-summer when the heat has almost become unbearable in the center of the city, that Jiro swoops under the lintel of his apartment complex’s main hall, hands hanging above him as he shifts in the negative space there, shadows across his face despite the brightness of the sun just outside.

“Ready to join the big boys, Yuto?”

…

The _tonkatsu_ restaurant seats eight at max capacity, barely bigger than his flat. He nods to the chef behind the line and the chef nods back, eyes flitting to the staircase in the back of the joint. It is a loud street, but he still collects some curious stares as he advances back toward the hanging curtain, pulls it aside and begins his ascent.

The stairwell is dark and his eyes do not adjust well. He must hold tight to the side of the wall, thankful for the unclean stickiness of each step as he lifts foot after foot up the steep climb. Two thirds of the way up he can hear the sound of Jiro’s grunts, and another voice—a high, reedy, pleading litany of words pouring over the space. It is unbearably hot up here and he feels sweat begin to slip down his spine.

Yuto is rubbing the pale specter of a scar across his forehead as his eyes light upon Jiro landing strike after strike onto a man almost triple his age. Jiro powers through until the man is crumpled in a corner on the surface of his bed, turning and flicking his fingers into the air with a wince.

“Think I broke a goddamn finger,” he pants as Yuto stares. “Hit him, will you?”

Like a dance, Yuto slips past Jiro and eventually switches places with him. He looks over his shoulder, waiting—waiting for Jiro to tell him what to do, as always.

“Take your jacket off,” the man murmurs, pretending examine his knuckles. “You’ll rip the seams.”

He does as he’s told, straightening the arm as the fabric slips from him. He throws it across a chair opposite, eyes locked on the man whimpering into his sheets. He does not lift himself up, so Yuto falls to his knees. He cannot tell if his expression is hard or blank—his face feels numb.

The first punch is easy, and the second. It feels like beating a _soba_ dough, mangy, his knuckles making contact with the old man’s already-pulpy face.

There are cries of pain, and then they simply stop. Yuto withdraws abruptly, robotically bringing himself back up to his feet. He looks down, disinterested, to check the front of his shirt for blood, and sees a fleck or two in dimness of the streetlight coming in through the window.

“That’s why I always wear black during these things,” Jiro says behind him, coming up to clasp him on the shoulder. Yuto does not jump—past that. So far past that.

Instead, he tilts his face toward Jiro but keeps his eyes on the old man’s still body. “Do we just leave it?”

Jiro nods, the expression strangely solemn. His eyes are darting from Yuto’s to the rest of his features, something like guilt in them.

Yuto stands in this silence for a moment before inhaling. He reaches down to collect his suit jacket. “How’s your finger?”

“That’s what you’re thinking about right now?” Jiro’s tone is incredulous. “That’s fucking cold. The first time I—”

“Shut up,” Yuto deadpans, almost shocking himself—if shock were a thing he could feel right now. “This isn’t really my first time.”

The _furin_ hanging in the old man’s window chimes as a breeze passes by. Jiro’s eyebrow raises. He regards him darkly, still with that tilted up, guilty gaze. His sleeves are rolled to the elbow and Yuto cannot help his eye’s steady flick over the whorls of the _irezumi_ design. It reaches out to him like a hypnotists’ white and black wheel would, and his fingers itch to run across the skin. To touch something gently, to be touched gently—why is it like this, after violence? His hand reaching, fingertips tracing, finding purchase against Jiro’s warm skin.

His body naturally seeking balance.

Maybe this is why he leans forward, both hands grasping Jiro’s hips, kissing him. It is as if he has never known brutality in his life, feeling Jiro’s mouth softly open to accept his tongue, feeling Jiro’s spine bump the corner of the wall and the stairwell where he presses him, covering the black-clad body tenderly with his own. The kiss deepens and he feels Jiro’s hardness against his thigh, watches curiously when the kiss is broken so Jiro can pant, “Motel?”

Yuto nods. He follows. And later, within the silence of the hourly room, he once more does as he is told.

…

Later that night, Yuto finds Eiko already naked, waiting, in his bed. His hair is still wet from the shower at the motel, and her wide smile fades as she sees this, sees his expression. He silently shuts his door, shucking off his jacket and button-up, leaving them on the floor.

He walks past her to the balcony, lights a cigarette. She watches him with a kind of knowing—but only a kind.

It is a long time before Yuto sees her again in person. For a long time, she is only ever in his dreams, the rare times that good ones come.

…

A bright red bloom against a wooden board. The sound of bone sliced clean through.

Yuto holds on until Endo’s men have cleared the room, holds himself in the deep, penitent bow until every last one has left. Then he grips to the back of a nearby chair with white knuckles, trying to swallow the vomit raising in his throat.

“Going to puke?” Fukuhara’s steady voice floats over to him. He sees little else but the man’s face in a blur of extraneous color, light. The boss is nodding and motioning, and soon it is just the two of them in the room with the last man, a man waiting in the corner with a doctor’s bag, who steps forward.

“You need your finger cauterized, I’m afraid. The pain is not yet over.”

Yuto shakes with the effort of gritting his teeth, nausea and anguish washing over him in alternating waves. The very real and visceral memory of the weight of his pinky in the white cloth comes back to him despite it all, like a bottle floating—The feeling of it like holding a few paper clips, like holding nothing. Unreal.

The man takes his hand from him, brandishing, readying some kind of tool. Yuto cannot look. Fukuhara quickly moves around the length of the table, gripping Yuto by the shoulders to guide him into a chair.

“Don’t pass out,” the man requests, soft. Almost soft enough to bring Yuto back to an equilibrium, if only he would keep speaking. If only he would murmur something, some nonsense like a mother would to a sick child. Yuto thinks that may be enough to take him from the brink of this pendulum’s dangerous swing to the side of nightmares, of dark, of a world on fire and an unsettling awareness of death.

An hour later he is cauterized, bandaged, and the pain pills have kicked in. Fukuhara waits with him in the silence as his breath evens out, eventually letting out a sigh.

“Would you like some whisky?”

Yuto brings his gaze up from the lacquered finish of the table, distant. He realizes at some point he had left the room, changed his clothing—he now wears a dark, layered _jinbe_ and Nepalese _gurkha_ pants.

“I don’t drink much myself, but I promise it’s the good stuff.”

Hesitant, Yuto nods. Fukuhara raises himself gracefully from where he had been sat next to him, leaving the room to return a few moments later with a bottle and two heavy, etched-glass tumblers. Yuto hastily moves to take the bottle and pour some for the other man first, following the correct etiquette for such a situation, but Fukuhara waves the courtesy away with a brush of his slim fingers.

“Don’t worry about being polite right now, Yuto. Relax. You’ve done enough for one night.”

Yuto sits back with a stilted movement, listens to the amber liquid ripple against the bottom of the tumbler as Fukuhara fills his glass. Fukuhara is watching, waiting for his reaction—and so Yuto brings the glass to his mouth.

“Is this,” he says, stopping mid-movement, “alright to drink with the pills?”

Fukuhara laughs, an expression that brings small wrinkles to the corners of his eyes. He is almost pedestrian with such a look on his face—elegant, yes, but not hard nor fearsome. Yuto can think of numerous times when his own father scared him more than the man sitting next to him, now.

“Yes, one drink should be just fine.”

Yuto takes a sip, letting the liquid mingle with the saliva in his mouth before swallowing it in one warm rush. He does not take his eyes from Fukuhara’s, not even as the phantom of his fingertip begins to whisper against the stump of his pinky.

…

Laundry hung up to dry. A baseball game on the television, promptly turned off. The defeated slump of shoulders, freckled somewhat like his own, as he unsheathed the sword.

Why is it that this kind of acceptance is shameful, while his own kind of acceptance is seen as strength?

“Boss’ll love you even more, now.”

Yuto feels the small bumps in the road underneath the car’s near-perfect suspension, rocking his head where he leans it against the window. He knows Jiro is watching him in the rearview, but he does not look up, does not respond.

“Brat,” Jiro mutters, taking a corner more quickly than usual. Yuto slips across the slick leather seats to the near-middle, realizing he had not buckled himself in.

“You remember what I asked you when we first met?”

Yuto sighs, bringing himself back to the window and pulling the seatbelt over his chest, clicking it secure.

“You asked if I knew who you were.”

“Yeah. I think you still don’t know.”

This time he does meet Jiro’s gaze. “You mad or something?”

The other man scoffs. “Look at your eyes,” he jeers. “Don’t need anyone telling you what to do anymore, huh?”

Yuto does not understand this. This sudden thing from the man who once had his fingers fisted in his hair, once cried out with the pleasure Yuto could bring him with his mouth.

“Maybe you are a brave man, now. Or maybe you’re just plain dumb.”

Yuto blinks heavily, breaking the gaze. Outside, Tokyo slips past.

Going, going, gone.

…

“It is always returned.”

Fukuhara is at his desk. It seems like so long ago that Yuto was sat there on the other side while wearing the postal service uniform, gripping tight to the bill of the hat in his hands, unsure if he was going to live or die. Now, even with a sword between them, Yuto does not fear for his life.

“When I killed Shin Endo’s man inside the bookstore, I didn’t have time to think about it.”

“No. It was instinct.” Fukuhara withdraws the blade from its sheath with a metallic rattling. Returns it to the sheath after it rings poignantly in the air. “This is a _bushido_ ’s weapon. A man will face many battles in his life, Yuto.”

This is not the first time Fukuhara has addressed him so informally. He stands as still as a statue as Fukuhara circles to his side, choosing to stay within his personal space as is his custom. Yuto smells something delicate emanating from his skin, a light cologne that compliments the thick heat of summer.

“However… Fighting against his true nature, is a battle the warrior is sure to lose.”

Yuto turns his face to take in Fukuhara’s gaze, unsure which nature is his true one. Is it as Eiko decrees, that he is the embodiment of good amongst the evil? Or as Jiro had decided—beloved, but too soon risen like a star bound to implode?

Or is it as Fukuhara says? Skilled, worthy, capable.

Enough.

Yuto is leaning forward without much forethought, moving his profile to graze against the clean-scented skin at Fukuhara’s neck. The man breathes in in subtle shock, before raising a hand to Yuto’s ear to encourage the ministration, the kiss he places there against the steady blood flowing through the man’s jugular. How easily he could sink his teeth in, rip—but, no. Yuto needs this softness like he needed Jiro’s once before. And he finds that Fukuhara is more than happy to provide it, happy to let him take the sword from his hands and place it soundlessly against the surface of his desk, happy to have his body brought flush against Yuto’s own.

He moves behind Fukuhara’s body as Fukuhara once did to him. He runs his fingertips over the raised emblem of a galloping horse in the center of his shoulder blades, reaching around the man’s abdomen to slip his fingers between folds of silk _haori_ to untie the _jinbe_ top’s closure, to let it unfurl out against the air. He politely slips the man’s tasteful house clothes from him, entire.

Bereft of his finery, Fukuhara sidles onto his desk. He opens his hips and Yuto sinks in deeply, forehead lulling against the center of the man’s chest.

Yuto is reminded of nothing—reminded of no one.

…

“I know I’m going to die,” he says to the air, leaned against Eiko’s side on the old couch in his flat. It is the only piece of furniture he owns other than his bed, and even that was a hand-me-down from Kenzo. “But then, I wake up.”

Her breath is soft and even behind him, and she is wearing the shirt that he habitually lets her borrow when she comes over. It falls elegantly around her collarbones, opening on the suppleness of her chest.

“What do you think it means?”

Her confused laugh is not the usual one, and Yuto knows something else is on her mind beside his slightly worrying dream. He knows that he has been distant from Eiko lately, not just physically but also in his heart. In the beginning he loved her as a puppy would, but now that love has been touched by a drop of ink—a drop of ink in crystal clear water.

He only now realizes he thinks of himself as the ink, and her as the water.

As she speaks behind him, something ephemeral and excited within her low, melodic voice, Yuto cannot take his eyes off the mattress. He listens, thinking distantly that Kenzo had fallen in love with Rei on that mattress—and now he, Eiko.

She withdraws a sonogram from her wallet. Yuto has not known happiness like this before. Not known hope like this.

A lucky bed, that.

…

Yuto picks Jiro up on a street in Kabukicho, knowing immediately that the other man is drunk. He takes shotgun despite how strange that is, in this car, for Yuto to see. He fidgets with the radio like it is his own home, those hands that proudly own everything they touch, settling on a station that plays an old blues song Yuto has not heard before.

The abandoned depot is just like any other one they have been to, but, somehow, nothing like it. Yuto feels the instinctual hitch in his step as they climb the stairs, Jiro in front of him, and wonders why the man had been drinking before a job—wanton as he was, it was not in his nature to give in to vices before something decisive. He was always within reason, and, so, Yuto feels the invisible antenna around his ears twitch, unsettled with the scene splayed out in front of them.

It briefly registers with him that Jiro is wearing black.

Then he’s sucker punched, walking in the door. His hair is pulled back by someone twice his weight, as Jiro moves steadily toward a bookshelf and withdraws the selfsame short blade he has sliced into his own skin, stuck into a man’s writhing, bloody guts.

“ _Warui, na_ ,” Jiro apologizes distantly, and Yuto realizes this is why he is drunk—He had to be, to be able to do this.

To kill him.

…

He is deep in the rice fields of the countryside when Fukuhara calls.

“Yuto, come back. You cannot outrun your fate.”

He hears the whisky in the man’s throat, recalls the distant sadness in his eyes as he looked out the backseat window, as he brought his slim, elegant hand to the manicured facial hair at his chin after Yuto told him, asked him for his daughter’s hand.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Do you know how I became a widower?” Fukuhara asks, edged by urgency. “The last time there was a war between the yakuza families, my car was ambushed. The bullets meant for me hit my wife instead.”

Something is tearing away inside of him.

“The day I buried her, I promised myself two things: that after I won the war I would do everything to prevent another one, and _that my daughter would never marry a gangster_.”

“She loves me.”

Yuto can almost hear the softness of Eiko’s laughter inside the cabin of the car. He swallows, and has never felt more sure that the woman could be the constant light balancing his dark. That he could even extract the ink from himself, or maybe just make something they are both happy with.

As muddled as it would be, it would be okay.

“She’ll forget you.”

The words fall like a brick against glass, shattering.

…

In the bright dawn light, the cliff over the sea looks something like an answer, hopeful. This is what Yuto thinks, throttling the engine and stripped bare of the trappings he thought he had been building over the past few months—trappings like brotherhood, bravery, and love.

He closes his eyes, accepting his fate.

And there is the earthquake, the cliff crumbling and bringing the car into the sea as he stands and watches with the sword shining like a silver thread through it all, gripped tight in his hand. _This is what true loss looks like_ , Yuto thinks, _not anything like what I’ve seen at all_. The high wind whips his hair around his cheeks as he opens his eyes, keeps them open.

Yuto realizes then, that loss can look a little bit like an answer, hopeful.


End file.
